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Carbon cuts cost 'little or nothing'

27 October 1990

To cut or not to cut emissions of carbon dioxide is the key issue at
the World Climate Conference in Geneva this week. But as representatives
from 100 countries argue the pros and cons of different strateties to minimise
the effects of climate change, the US will find it difficult to maintain
its hardline stance against cuts. The American government claims that the
costs of reducing its output of the greenhouse gas would be crippling. Yet,
four new studies commissioned by the government show that emissions could
be stabilised or even slightly reduced at little or no cost.

The most optimistic picture comes from ICF Resources, a research institute
in Washington DC. By switching to natural gas, building thriftier electrical
appliances and cars, using ethanol as fuel, and otherwise improving efficiency,
emissions of carbon dioxide could be cut by 5 per cent by the year 2000
– at the same time saving $40 billion (20 billion Pounds) a year in energy
costs.

A study at Brookhaven Research Laboratory in New York concludes that
it is possible to freeze current emissions at no cost. Between 2000 and
2020, the cost of preventing a tonne of carbon from going into the atmosphere
would be only $4. In another set of studies, government laboratories conclude
that the increase in demand for energy could be kept below 10 per cent over
the next 30 years using technologies that would pay for themselves.

An unpublished study by Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory refines
this last projection. It says that arresting emissions of carbon dioxide
in the US would require improvements in energy efficiency of only 1.9 per
cent a year. One of the researchers, Jim Skea, points out that Britain would
have to pay nothing to hold its emissions constant until 2005, if it improved
its energy efficiency by using more nuclear power, natural gas, and renewable
energy such as wind and tidal power. To reduce emissions by 20 per cent
in 2005 would cost about $70 per tonne of carbon.

‘I don’t think these studies are officially on the agenda of the meeting,’
said Barry Solomon of the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate office,
which funded some of the research. ‘The technology is almost there to cut
or stabilise carbon dioxide emissions,’ Solomon says. But, he says, some
of the hidden costs of reducing emissions, such as unemployment in the coal
industry, have not been taken into account.